WINE WITH DINNER – A practical use for leftover red wine

Just as I serve wine with all of my evening meals, so do I also regularly cook with it. For example, instead of adding a few tablespoons of water to the frozen veggies I am microwaving, I substitute some leftover white wine from the refrigerator. Even when I thin out salad dressing, I do it with wine – white with cream dressings and red with ketchup-based dressings. Red or white wine, whether leftover or from a bag-in-the-box, is such a versatile cooking ingredient, that I would no more cook without it than I would without salt or pepper.

For instance, one great use of leftover red wine is to add flavor to meat dishes and help get rid of fat. Next time you are frying up some ground beef or sausage for an Italian meal, start off with olive oil, onions and garlic, add mushrooms if you like, and then dump in the meat. Fry until the meat is almost done and the onions translucent. Then add a cup or two of red wine. Bring just barely to a boil (to evaporate the alcohol and infuse the meat with wine color and flavor) and then strain everything into a large Pyrex measuring pitcher. Dump the strainer full of meat and veggies back into the pot and proceed with whatever you are making while letting the fat rise to the top of the Pyrex container.

Then use a gravy separator to get rid of the fat, which you can pour into small containers and freeze in the wintertime for the birds. If you follow this procedure when making spaghetti sauce, a stew, or a soup, you can add back all of the liquid you separated to give some added flavor to what you are preparing and you will end up serving a very tasty, but relatively low fat meal! - Jay Roelof - www.suburbanwines.com